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How the Tao of the sandbox is making me a "real man" for the digital age

Talking about the medium chill and leaving work early … but still paying the bills

I am always tempted to complain, because it is hard to admit that you have it almost perfect, but my work/life balance is almost perfect. I work short days, with fairly interesting projects at my day job, and hours with my wife and kids and time to write at night. Oh, and I get paid enough not to worry about repo men and foreclosure.

Thank you Sweden. Now if only you would learn how to smile …

The medium chill: This is a story from Grist last year, and I love it. It goes into all the difficulties humans have with stepping off the fast track, eliminating possibilities and walking away from prestige and money. And it praises relationships and time with family, while being realistic about the annoyances of being a little short of cash. Even here in Sweden, E and I reach for the medium chill – small apartment, summer cottage with no water, no car, old stroller, not working 100 percent. And we gain so much. A quote:

That’s what consumer culture forever tells us: more money/stuff/status means fewer constraints, more freedom, more choices, thus more happiness. The entire economy runs on spending and debt, and for that to work everyone needs to think they’re not happy but could be happy if they just had more sh*t or a better job or a better house. Every “consumer” needs to be running on the treadmill, working toward the next thing.

But social psychologists tell a different story. They point out that there’s very little evidence that, once a certain base level of material security is achieved, more money and stuff make us happier. Gilbert offers one explanation: having fewer choices is often more conducive to synthetic happiness.

Her Key to Efficiency, Arrive Late, Leave Early: This story tells an expat tale from Paris of a woman who discovered that she was more efficient with shorter work days. Yes! Having only six hours to get my job done means I leave very little time for screwing around. Of course, it puts the pressure on too, but I’ll take that if I can unwind in the sun with my kids every afternoon. Plus, there was this interesting tidbit about Dads. Once again, I find I am not unique:

More interestingly, she found a third category of men, who were successful in terms of performance evaluations and compensation, but who actually worked fewer hours and were unavailable for the office on evenings, weekends and vacations. These men subtly and skillfully chose the projects and clients that would allow more flexibility – and surrounded themselves with kindred spirits who would cover for one another. But they had also learned that it was better for their careers to remain discreet about their strategy, and so they weren’t role models for the rest.

Bring Back the 40-Hour Workweek: From Alternet, via Salon, this is a look at why we had the 40-hour workweek to begin with. And guess what? It was not just labor being lazy. It was business figuring out that workers work best when they have shorter days. In the short run, we only get a little more done in hours 40-60, and over the long run, it’s a disaster. :

American workers don’t realize that for most of the 20th century, the broad consensus among American business leaders was that working people more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous and expensive — and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot.

Money Is the Root of All Parenting: But don’t get poor! Which seems obvious, but is perhaps a good message in the face of all these earthy work less links. Lisa Belkin at the Huffington Post talks about reports that show that parents lose it more when they are stressed and angry (of course). And how to avoid that? Don’t lose sleep about the car repair bill. Don’t get frantic about bank overdraft fees.

Hard to pull that off if you are poor. So how to help the poor, or more specifically, their children?

What, then, is the alternative? They start with a few suggestions: “stabilize incomes, provide low-income credit alternatives to deal with the ups and downs of life, or ensure stable housing. These may not be “parenting” programs in the conventional sense of the term. But by freeing up psychic resources they allow people to be the parents they want to be, they allow more traditional parental skills programs to be more successful.”